How many times have you guys asked the question online, just to get several different responses?
Like, what CPU should I use? Seven hundred answer!
Or, how much RAM do I need? What do you guys need?
Will you guys stop? No! Well, at least they can all agree on that.
But it does make me wonder, do we, the writers of Linus Tech Tips,
all give different answers to arguably objective questions?
And if we don't, can we give a convincing reason as to why we think the way we do?
Each one of us is going to read off a prompt, give our answer, and see what arguments come out of it.
Ray tracing is path tracing, okay? So, when they just, they just lie the whole time.
They lie the whole time. It's like, no, it's not okay. And to make it even more interesting,
some of these questions Linus has already answered, whether it was on Wanshow or in another video.
We may not know in the moment when we're debating, but you guys will see this little pop-up.
How about we start with that first one? How much RAM and storage do you need for gaming in 2025?
I would make the argument that you only needed about 16 gigabytes of memory,
and one terabyte of storage. If you're doing more demanding tasks,
like Photoshop editing or video editing, then I would argue for more RAM,
but I feel like one terabyte gets you enough of a handful of games. We gotta use the paddles.
Yeah, we gotta use the paddles. I, it's close. It's really close.
I think that one terabyte is enough for games, and I think 16 gigs of RAM is starting to be on the low end.
If you're running Windows 11, and if you're doing any kind of extra,
like I have my Plex server on my computer, and so I've been getting low memory mornings
with 32 gigs of RAM, when I try to launch a game
if I have stuff running in the back. Yes, that's a fair point. He only said gaming.
He only said gaming. That's true. I would also agree with you insofar as that
the difference in price between 16 and 32, it's not that big.
No. Yeah.
And you are gonna get a lot more long-term value over 32 Gigabyte.
There's really good value DDR5 kit. So if you're building a DDR5 machine, I would push towards 32,
but if you're going so budget that you're on DDR4, it's 16 is probably still adequate.
Like everything we're gonna answer today, I think it's gonna be, it depends.
It also depends on your internet speed and if you are capped on data,
because if it is a big deal to download game that takes two days and you are limited to 200 gigs a month,
then you want to have a lot of storage. What are you guys playing? This?
Okay, click. Yeah. See you in 10 minutes. Just like you should click the link down below
to our sponsor. Who wants to take the next one? Oh, David.
What is better for most people? A pre-built or a custom-built PC?
I don't wanna answer this. Most people is too hard of a term to kind of lock down.
For most people, if we're including literally everyone on this planet. Most.
Pre-built. I think that it is a better choice for most people.
I have been shocked with how difficult it is to optimize your PC in 2025.
Getting a resizable bar working for normal people is enough of an obstacle
that you will not get the most out of your GPU. And if it's pre-built and they're optimizing it for you,
then you are actually getting your money's worth. That's assuming those settings are done out of the box,
which we've seen from our Secret Shopper series that sometimes they don't take the time
to configure the BIOS, maybe missing XMP or some other settings, right?
I think it's still good to do a once-over, maybe watching a video that can help you
get the most out of your PC, even if you do buy a pre-built. But I would agree for most people,
a pre-built's probably the way to go. I've had multiple friends reach out for help
and I've given them like full tutorials on here's what you need to do,
here's your parts list, here's how it'll go, I'll walk you through building it.
And then a week later, they're just like, I bought this pre-built and they send me a link.
And I'm like, that's cool, man, I'm happy for you, you've got a computer or whatever.
It can be a daunting task, right? They get afraid. It's just the same thing as like,
should you change your own oil? Probably, it's not that hard.
So you save a lot of money, you can dump it down the drain.
But 90% of people just go to the quick loop and then say no to anything that they offer you
and get your oil changed. Let's go Adam.
What is the biggest waste of money when building a PC?
This is a hard to yes or no, because... I mean, we're gonna agree we're at...
Well, yeah, we've got a way for him. There's so many ways to waste your money.
Custom cables. Ooh. Custom cables.
That's pretty good. I would broaden cables into aesthetics.
I think that aesthetics is the thing that people spend the most money on and most people have their computers
tucked beneath their desk. That's a fair one. I agree with that one. As much as I fully agree with you,
I am also the person who will absolutely go and spend an extra $200 on RGB backplate,
custom cables that match my bill, extra RGB light strips.
I'm in the school, I'm in like the Milford Man type computer, okay?
A computer should be neither seat nor herd.
Like children. I agree with that. And I, no, let's finish this.
I have another one. Oh, hey, you know what? No, if you guys are gonna talk over each other, use the screwdriver.
It's the talking screwdriver. I go first on. No, I wanna hear David's point.
What I think people waste the most money on in PC building is in patience.
They don't wait for the right deal. And it's like, unless you have a broken computer
and you need that computer next week to do work, just wait for the sales, man.
Like, and buy it piecemeal. Don't buy it all at once. Wait for there to be a motherboard and like RAM combo.
Wait for there to be a CPU and storage combo. And you can save literally $1,000 on a $2,000 computer.
Like you can save so much money if you just wait a little bit.
Yeah. Should I use an air cooler or an AIO?
Oh. Now, you're up first.
This is really tough. Cause I think that most people can use an AIO just fine.
And they've gotten a lot more reliable. And cheap. And cheaper.
But I don't think you can beat the reliability
that is fan plus hunk of metal. So I'm going to vote for air cooler.
I 100% agree with you. For most people. Yeah. Yeah.
Especially with thermal right being king recently, their prices on their air coolers have come down so much.
They also sell like a $50 AIO. That's right. That's right.
Yeah. That's the thing. You can also get a similar performing $20 tower cooler.
And I'm confident that my air cooler will work in 15 years.
Whereas my AIO, there's no way it's making it pass. No. The water will evaporate at some point,
slowly over time, or the pump might fail. Going back to the longterm use of it,
companies like Noctua basically promise any sort of mounting as new sockets come out, right?
You can email them and be like, hey, I still have this cooler with proof of purchase.
Can I get the newest mount and they'll send it? You don't have proof of purchase. It costs $7.
I think we're all pretty much on the same page though about an air cooler. Get an air cooler.
Yeah. If you're worried at all. Should I buy a good headset or surround speakers?
Oh. It depends. I feel like this one might be a Linus one.
He's talked so much on WAN about how he misses like his 5.1
surround setup that he used to have. I still think because I live with my wife,
I would get a headset. There's no way I could justify a surround. Are we talking?
Experience. Exact same dollar amount. What is our dollar amount?
What is your living situation? There is so many factors that could decide
what is better for your situation. If I have to make a blanket statement for everyone,
I think a headset is more universally useful.
But I don't want to make that statement. I refuse. I'm surprised that this is even like the comparison.
I thought you were going to say good headset plus or get a separate mic and headphones.
Oh, that's a great question too. That's a bigger question to me because I think
should you buy surround speakers for your computer? No.
Let's debate that other question because I think we're actually more interested in the minutiae of that.
I am. Headset with mic built in or headset and mic combo separately?
With unlimited budget, of course, having separate devices is better.
100%. You have a $100 budget. Oh, OK. Headset probably.
At the combo. Or like the really? For $100, yeah, because you're not
going to get a decent pair of headphones and a decent mic for $100. If you're buying brand new kind of,
I completely agree with you on that. Yeah. Because on top of that, you have to contend with the fact
that then you have to deal with two devices, which is either twice as many things to charge.
Or twice as many wires. You have to deal with usually there's
less convenient sound management. Like you have to manage your mic. Oftentimes, if it's a USB mic, it's also an output.
There's so much to deal with. If it's on your desk and especially if it's cheap,
they'll pick up all of your desk noise. Every single time you bump it, whereas a headset mic
might be lower quality overall in terms of your speech intelligibility, it's
going to be less annoying to everybody on the Discord call with you.
Yeah, that's fair. I would rather just spend $100 on headphones and pretend like I don't have friends.
That's headset versus speakers.
I would think it's got to be a headset over surround. I refuse to answer it's too situational right in the middle.
So I'm going to agree with David. First question is not a comparison that's relevant
to anybody normal. And then for the second question about should you
get a combo headset mic or separate? On a budget.
On a budget, I think it's got to be combo. If you're as close to 99 as possible
and you're not going used, the combo. No, I think you should still go separate.
Just get a crappy mic to start and then plan on investing in a $40 mic down the road.
That's fair. The man freeches patience. What is a better investment?
Balling out on a high end system today or spreading out the same money over several small upgrades?
I'm a believer in using your money economically and there's such a big point of diminishing returns
in PC building that you should aim for good enough today
with smart upgrades that you know you're going to do in a couple years.
I might be the only one that disagrees. Tell us why you disagree, Elijah.
My idea behind this is let's say it's $5,000 over five years.
I don't know. That's a really top of the line system, by the way. I think if you're buying that good of a computer
in our current state of gaming and how it's been the last couple of years,
you're going to be totally fine in that five years versus trying to get to that same performance by the time
it's at that five year. I buy a $3,000 system right now and then I buy a $2,000
graphics card five years from now. I'm going to have a better system. Maybe it just depends on them what you're starting and budget
is, right? Because I think if you start with $1,000, I would totally agree on doing a more upgrade path, right?
I think it's tough because there's always a little bit of crystal balling and I
think that GPUs will be better value in two years.
So I'm going to plan for that to be the time that I upgrade my GPU.
But you never really know something catastrophic can happen in the world or things can change
or someone has breakthrough technology and all of a sudden there's $250 graphics cards that are really frigging good.
And I feel like that's playing a dangerous gambling game in some elements versus you know what you can get right now.
This is what you can get. Yeah, but what you can get right now sucks.
I agree on that part. Let's reduce it from $5,000 because that's way more than.
Yeah, go to $2,000 total. $2,000 total.
$1,000 PC, $1,000 of a index ETF.
OK, and then sell that in two years.
But then you have to pay taxes on the income you make. No, I put in my TFSA.
It's a tax sheltered account. Obviously I use my registered account, Elijah.
This is financial advice. No, no, no.
I think, again, it comes down to situational, but I would agree for probably most people.
I would probably lean back towards you guys. And I would agree that doing the incremental upgrades
is better for most people. When you're buying crypto, you dollar cost average, OK?
Dollar cost averaging. That's when you space out. That's why you even out your losses.
Is ray tracing worth the FPS hit? Absolutely not.
Ray tracing is yet to be a still unproven technology.
It is a perform worse button. Half the time, unless you're using the ultra ray tracing
settings, you're getting worse than the baked-in lighting. That's for the middle and below settings on Cyberpunk.
It's true in Alan Wake until you get to the really high settings, which absolutely nuke your performance.
Ray tracing, it was a solution looking for a problem that has been shoved down our throats
by the NVIDIA, and now everyone's doing it for some reason
because it has been the hype thing, and also NVIDIA is now a $5 trillion company.
So if you just kind of work with NVIDIA, then you get that NVIDIA money, OK?
So here's the thing. OK, no, no, no, it's not OK. It's not OK. Ray tracing sucks.
Ray tracing is bad. They said, what if we chose, what if we just
tried to make the most infinitely difficult thing to compute, and what if we made us do it now instead
of rendering out like everyone else? Like they just chose an impossible task
and then said, let's eat hardware at it, and they failed for 10 years straight.
I agree with the prompt, and I disagree with you guys. I think that it's on a per game basis, Metro Exodus,
for example, especially with their version that was done without raster and was entirely ray traced.
It looks incredible. Depending on what FPS you're starting from, if we're going from 100 and I'm going down to 80
to enable ray traced lighting, I'll probably do that.
Maybe I just have so much pent up hatred, because also ray tracing, when they called it ray tracing,
they're like, well, it's not actually path tracing. Path tracing is a different thing. I was like, well, that wasn't ray tracing in the other place,
because ray tracing is path tracing, OK? So when they just lied the whole time, they lied the whole time.
No, it's not OK. Do you know how big is the transistor in your CPU?
It's on a 5 nanometer process. That's all bulls***. I think most of us say that it is not worth the FPS.
Not worth it. Except for Plouf. He thinks it's worth it. Depending on the game.
Oh, this one's definitely a Linus one, and it's definitely more of an opinion piece.
Oh, boy. It's ad block piracy.
OK, the problem with the premise in this discussion. Well, I asked the question.
I'm supposed to go next. You're right. Thank you, Talking Screwdriver, lttstore.com.
I'm hearing everyone getting ready to type on their keyboards at home right now.
At its core, yes, ad block is piracy.
I agree. Do I do it and I'm a pirate?
Yes. Oh, yeah, I'm not saying I don't, but it's 100% piracy.
I think it is. You want to say something? I'll let you go. The problem is, how do we define piracy?
And we could sit here and debate the minutiae of what that means,
and we could define it to have it be that ad block is piracy one way,
or we could define it that it's not. And I think that the real problem people had
is that they thought Linus was attacking the morality.
And I don't think that's what he was doing. I agree with you. And I think that piracy is totally fine.
And there's nothing wrong. If you want to pirate, I pirate a ton.
We all do. For legal reasons, no one here does.
So I disagree mainly because it makes the discussion more
interesting. I think the whole thing, ad block is piracy is a packaging issue.
However, my thought is that you're not enriching the artists who are providing you with free art.
You are enriching the platform. The thing you are stealing is not the platform.
This is where people get mad about it. When you think about it, the thing that you're stealing is the data,
because that's what costs money for the platform.
You're not stealing the art because it's already being streamed and available.
But that's such a narrow argument, because the platform is what provides the data in terms
of what we measure our success on. I mean, if we saw recently with Linus
talking about this on the WAN, with how many people use ad blocker,
we saw our views take a dip because people are using it so much
when ad blocker actually made a change recently that was affecting
how views were counted on YouTube. And if you were to extrapolate that into what our normal ratio is
and try to extrapolate revenue, not even just for us,
but other creators that are out there on the platform, it's not just stealing from YouTube
because you big, bad YouTube company. You are actually harming creators.
But I think in terms of this argument, we're going to break it back down to its core.
It is piracy. Using ad blocker, I still think it is piracy.
I think it's not piracy, it's a packaging error. I think it harms creators.
I think it harms the platform. But I also think that they've dug their own hole.
It's the same thing that you were saying. It's a service issue. We need David's vote.
David convinced me to pay for YouTube premium.
He did. It's the one thing that's worth paying for. Is ad block piracy?
It's piracy, but it's totally fine to do it. There is nothing wrong with doing it.
I actually recommend it. I recommend it, too. For safety on the internet, yes.
We are supporting you for doing it. What is the best time to upgrade your computer?
There's no best time. When you have the money or when you need to.
Yeah. If you want something that's more practical, like when and during the year.
Oh, you should buy it hard. Back to school sales.
Cyber Monday. And then usually, assuming everything's in stock,
when the next gen launches, buy old gen stuff, drop it quickly.
Huge. So like mid spring, late summer is always good.
I agree with all that. I think overall, it's safe to say that we all agreed on some things, gave different answers for others,
and I think that's why it's super important whenever you're looking or have a question,
you should do research. Find multiple videos by different creators.
Use Reddit to search for different reviews, and you should use the link down below
to check out our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video, go check out the recent video
where Linus answered some questions online. Kind of went undercover to answer some questions,
just like us. And make sure to check out Flowplain, where we discuss, where we discuss it.
Okay, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready. Stop.